Looking into D-10, E-7 and F2-7 Visa in Korea
This one is going to be short one, got a dinner appointment and might actually run late.
I got accepted to a training program in Japan and I have to head there towards the end of September. To apply for Japanese visa, I need to have alteast 3 months left on my Alien Registration Card (ARC). The problem is, my D-2 (Student) visa expires at the end of September meaning that if I want to apply, I should be applying for Japanese visa by this month.
The issue is that the Japanese don't trust Nepalese and to make sure I don't run away, I have to submit shit load of documents; documents that I don't have direct control of. It does look like I will not be able to do so this month. The only way I see it right now is to extend my visa.
Extend?
Since I am graduating, there's absolutely no way I can keep pretending to be a student. That means I have to change my visa status. For that I need a job.
Do you really need a job?
That's where the D-10 visa comes into play. D-10 visa is called the "Job Seeking Visa." If your contract runs out or your graduate from a school in Korea and still haven't managed to find a job, you can extend your stay up to 6 months.
If, like me, you have graduated from a Korean college/university and have done either a four year course (undergraduate) or two year course (Masters) then you can further extend that stay one more time. So that adds up to 12 months.
In case you graduated from the top tier school or were working for a Fortune 500 company and left, you have the option to extend the visa upto three times. That means you can stay here for 2 more years without basically doing anything.
I mean who just sits and does nothing for 2 years? But, clearly I do have options to stay.
What about E-7?
E-7 visa is an interesting one indeed. The Professional Foreign Personnel Employment Visa is intended to attract foreign highly skilled workers and make them work here in Korea.
The portion that I am really interested in is the Small & Medium Business Corporation's International Engineer Placement Program which applies to the E-7 visa.
If, like me, you did your graduate school in Korean university, you are basically exempt from having no work experience. Plus the companies that hire you are supported by the government. According to Prof. Dr. Park who wrote a paper on "Challenges of Highly Skilled Migration in Korea" and was presented at an international workshop in Tokyo, businesses hiring foreign skilled workers (in case of me being an engineer) will receive monthly allowance of 1.5 million Won (10 million Won a year, 7 months maximum) and the cost of airfare (one way, economy). Plus, financial support upto 3million Won is provided to the company for hiring process.
This can be advantageous for me because the company receives money for hiring me. A pretty good case I can place to force the company to hire me.
Why? because smaller/medium companies need to be an attractive place for foreigners to work for. When all the talent is being drained by behemoths like Samsung and Hyundai, whats left for them?
What's F2-7 Visa then?
Residency visa through point based system. The minimum you need is 80 out of 120 and the points depend on a lot of factors. Each factors have their own weight. I did a quick calculation and someone for my age (+23), with my graduate degree in engineering (+35), the fact that i graduated from Korea with that degree (+4) , with my level of korean skills which is level, well...1 (10), I already have a total of 23+35+4+10 = 72. If you want a detailed look at how these points stack up, head over to electrow's blog [HERE]. The three part series should make things abundantly clear.
It's nice actually, to graduate from Seoul National's engineering program. Didn't think I would ever say that but there you go.
Full paper on "Challenges of Highly Skilled Migrants in Korea" [HERE]
Thanks man for this!very useful.. I think I can get 80 points..guess what it means haha
ReplyDeleteOh yeah your Korean is proficiency is right up there. Better apply man
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